The School of Lost Borders offers vision fasts and rites of passage training which cultivate self-trust, responsibility, and understanding about ones' unique place within society and the natural world. Its programs provide guided opportunities, perspectives, teachings, and much needed self-reflection time in a non-judgmental yet challenging environment.

About the School of Lost Borders

Lost borders is without borders. Although our headquarters have been in the Eastern Sierra of California for over 30 years, our courses can now be found in many locales, from Death Valley and the Rocky Mountains to the moors and wildlands of other continents. Every course is a rite of passage, a border crossing from the past to the future, from the old to the new, from the outward to the inward, from the self to the Self.

WHO WE ARE

The legacy of the School of Lost Borders began in the early 1970's. During the ensuing decades the shape of the School has periodically morphed to better serve our internal growth, as well as the changing times. In July of 2008 the School became a 501(c)(3) non profit. Our commitment to finding form to meet change and to allow for creative growth, matches our commitment to support each individual and our species through this same natural process.

The School runs, evolves and self adjusts through the process of inter-dependent autonomy inherent in living systems. The School resides in the living room of each guide, and the land of each basecamp. Our two paid staff members hold our “center pole” to help guide, orient and facilitate this process. Our wonderful Board of Directors (self-proclaimed the Not So Bored) actively supports, listens, witnesses, and suggests, helping to steer the beast. While we are richly diverse in character, life style, and role in our communities, we have a resilient thread that unites us.

We are an interconnected circle of men and women who share a deep respect for the land, human nature, ceremony, and each other. We are guides who extend this same respect and caring to each person who feels the call to join us in ceremony.

We live a passion for the diversity of life, for the nature of human, for the voice of ceremony, for the healing qualities of community. We take the role of guide seriously, setting our own story aside to help birth each individual’s evolving mythos. We are not Gurus or Healers; we are skilled midwives in supporting the natural transitions and initiations of living and dying. Our teachers are the land, the ceremony itself, and each person bold enough to step across the threshold into the unknown mystery of their “becomingness”.

We recognize that a full life is made up of big and small initiating experiences, each one precious and offering opportunities for growth. The interplay of light and shadow, pain and celebration, forms the character of our evolving story as we claim our unique place in humanity and in our communities. We offer a time-honored way to lift these significant life events up, and say “Holy, Holy”.

“The critical problems of becoming male and female, relations within family, and passing into old age, are directly related to the devices which the society offers the individual to help him achieve the new adjustment.” -- Arnold Van Gennep

The School

The School of Lost Borders offers vision fastand rites of passage training which cultivate self-trust, responsibility, and understanding about ones' unique place within society and the natural world. Its programs provide guided opportunities, perspectives, teachings, and much needed self-reflection time in a non-judgmental yet challenging environment.

We began way back when, in the days when revolution was in the air, when rock and roll was filled with protest and the young were sticking flowers in the gun barrels of National Guardsmen. Even then, the answer to the dilemma of culture was clear: True revolution would never come about until the children remembered the way to get to adulthood - and the adults to true elderhood - and the elders to honorable death.

The gift is to the giver, and comes back
most to him – it cannot fail.
Walt Whitman

To speak of money is an exercise in humility. We need money to survive, to eat, to feel secure and cared for, and yet, money carries the weight of many shadows – greed, consumerism, and commodification. Living in a culture where wealth often equates with power, where those with less are viewed as less than, and where shrewdness is valued over relationship, this comes as no surprise. Our society is obsessed with money, and so we, at the School of Lost Borders, walk lightly, humbly, and as consciously as possible whenever we enter into this realm.